Jail Education’s Thieves, Not the Cheaters

April 24, 2015

The recent conviction of 11 Atlanta Public School employees has stirred conversations about corruption, cheating and education’s future. In this opinion-editorial piece for Ebony.com I weigh in on why I think the wrong people have ended up in handcuffs.

As news that 11 educators from Atlanta Public Schools were convicted of racketeering charges made national headlines last week, cheers of “justice served” quickly rang out.

That is far from the truth of the matter.

Let me be clear, 11 employees of APS were found guilty of the terrible act of cheating, but they are not the ones who should be behind bars. Who should be there? The people who have stolen our children’s education since the early 2000s with a brand of high-stakes testing that breeds competition rather than collaboration and offers achievement gap mania rather than offering assistance to schools and students with the greatest needs. These thieves of public education are the bigger problem than 11 educators in Atlanta.